


Comfort and Joy

by delires



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Christmas, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-22
Updated: 2011-04-22
Packaged: 2017-10-18 12:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delires/pseuds/delires
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christmas is about finding a place to call home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comfort and Joy

****  
_December 19 th 2010_

Eames has long been of the opinion that it would be possible to divide everything in the world into two categories: ‘things which are to Arthur’s taste’ and ‘things which are not to Arthur’s taste’.

The colour grey, silk ties, good steak, dry wines. All of these things fit quite clearly into the first category. Things such as cricket, Guinness and tie dye, on the other hand, are most definitely second category material. It is an easy call to make, once you know how.

Eames does know how. Arthur is nothing if not consistent and Eames knows Arthur’s taste so well that he feels able to divide the world according to it.

Yet, Arthur is turning out to be the most difficult person that Eames has ever shopped for.

Eames stands in the centre of Selfridges, somewhere between the food court and the greetings cards, feeling a little smothered by the thick garlands of fairy lights and the pressing crowds of duffel-coated Londoners. The carols being piped into the store are on a loop. Eames has heard Kylie Minogue’s cover of ‘Santa Baby’ at least three times now, and he has a headache of such magnitude that his vision is starting to go a little black at the edges.

He is at his wit's end. He has trawled all through menswear twice. He has handled every item in the Smythson line. He has investigated overpriced food and fragrance and luggage and novelty goods and has even, in desperation, chanced a brief jaunt into the lingerie section, because Eames is honestly beginning to feel that desperate.

This year, nothing, _but nothing_ , seems to be quite right for Arthur.

*

The first Christmas present which Eames ever bought Arthur was a shot glass which was decorated with the design of a cityscape and the words ‘Hong Hong’ printed beneath the picture.

This was in the early days, before Mal, before inception, before anything in life had really begun to feel serious. Eames was barely twenty-six, Arthur was younger still. They were together in Hong Kong, fresh off a successful job, giddy and reckless and invincible.

Also, crucially, they were drunk to the eyeballs.

Eames had lurched into a neon-lit gift shop, tugging Arthur behind him, in the hopes of scoring a giant box of duty-free cigarettes. It was here that Eames found the shot glasses on a rotating wire rack, and spent far too long crowing over the typo. No doubt the shopkeeper was offended and terrified.  Or perhaps he was simply disgusted at the sight of two grown men, drunk as teenagers, grabbing at each other and smearing sweaty fingerprints all over his merchandise.

Arthur, who was far more fun in those days, was leaning heavily against Eames and peering over his shoulder as Eames laughed himself to tears and shook the shot glass triumphantly in Arthur’s face.

“I’m buying you this. This is your present. This is just for you,” Eames said, trying to hold Arthur away from him a little, so that he could dig his wallet out of his jacket pocket.

“No,” Arthur said and then, “Okay. Okay, fine. But then I get you... _this._ ” He whirled around and seized a plastic lighter from another rack. It was white and printed with the words ‘I ♥ Hong Hong’.

Eames bellowed with laughter, so hard that he had to bend forwards and lean his hands against his thighs.

“Yes! Yes, that’s totally mine. You make that mine, baby, and I will love you for the rest of my life,” Eames said.

Arthur gasped, deliberately melodramatic, and pushed himself away from the shelves of magazines he was leaning against.

“Well, in that case, _baby,_ let’s do this thing.”

He slammed the lighter down onto the counter, narrowly avoiding a display of breath mints.

“Put your money where your mouth is,” he said, looking at Eames challengingly.

Eames did not even think. He just curled one hand around Arthur’s waist, tugged him stumbling closer and pressed their lips together.

They separated at the angry voice of the shopkeeper.

“Hey! No, no!” the man snapped, wagging a finger at them and scowling for all he was worth.

Eames was ready to tell him to fuck the hell off but Arthur was already leaning forwards, draping a forearm onto the counter, languid and loose and so beautiful in the hard, buzzing light of the place.

“Lighten up,” Arthur purred at the shopkeeper, heedless of the way that the man’s nostrils flared. And then he tugged the bills from Eames’s grasp and dropped a careless few, more money than both of their trinkets were worth, onto the counter.  

Eames laughed. He laced his fingers through Arthur’s and tugged him away, back out onto the street, where Arthur pressed the lighter into his hand.

“Merry Christmas, Eames,” Arthur said, with a twinkle in his eye, and Eames did not think he had ever been so charmed.

“Merry Christmas,” he said, holding the shot glass up with the tips of his fingers, presenting it to Arthur as though it was something far grander than a lump of misspelt tat. Arthur took it from him with a snort of laughter, and tucked it into his pocket.

“As if this is our Christmas,” he said.

“Indeed,” Eames agreed, swaying slightly on his drunken feet.

There was an ‘Irish bar’ across the road, decorated with glowing green shamrocks. Eames looked towards it deliberately.

“Pub?” he asked.

Arthur turned to look, and nodded.

“I’m already there in spirit,” he said. “Let’s catch up.”

Through a blurred series of events, Eames and Arthur ended up squeezed into a private karaoke room with two German flight attendants and a group of Chinese students who they had somehow picked up along the way. Eames stood up on the seat of their booth with one foot on the table and sang Tom Jones at the top of his lungs. Arthur tried to sing The Cure but couldn’t make it all the way through for laughing at the faces that Eames was making at him.

They made out messily in a muted corridor outside the karaoke room. And back in Arthur’s hotel room, they sort of tried to have sex, but were really both a bit too pissed to manage. Eames ended up falling asleep face down against the pillows with his shirt half unbuttoned and his dick hanging out of his trousers.

The next morning was all planes to catch and hungover vomiting. They shared painkillers and shook hands at the airport and forged an agreement to never again speak of the nonsense which was their Christmas in Hong Hong.

Eames still has that lighter, somewhere.

*

 _December 14 th 2010_

Of course, Oxford Street the week before Christmas would clearly be the most ill-advised shopping destination imaginable. There will be no time to find something decent back in London. Eames knows this perfectly well. But he has already tried the markets in Marrakech and is now dragging Ariadne all around the streets of Paris, demanding her opinion on everything, only to ultimately reject it every single time.

“It’s not _him_ , Ariadne. Don’t you understand? That is not at all Arthur. That is _clearly_ second category merchandise.”

Possibly he is beginning to verge on hysterical by this point, because Ariadne stares at him in despair and says, “What are you _talking_ about? Have you actually _lost your mind_? Are you about to start conjuring up _trains,_ Eames? Because if you are, then I want to know right now _,_ so that I can put a very quick and decisive end to our friendship.” 

And Eames has to stop and reassess for a moment before he groans and drags a hand over his face.

Ariadne sighs. She slides the folded cashmere sweater she has been clutching back onto the shelf.

“Eames. Arthur won’t care what you get him. Arthur won’t care if you get him anything at all. Nobody has even heard from Arthur in three months.”

“It hasn’t been that long.”

“I haven’t heard from Arthur. Have you heard from Arthur?”

Eames shakes his head.

“No,” he says, which is a lie.

“Exactly. So Arthur probably doesn’t care. Just buy him a tie and be done with it.”

“You don’t understand,” Eames says.

“I really don’t, no.”

Ariadne stares at him expectantly and Eames can’t handle the way that, like Arthur, she manages to make him feel both foolishly immature and unbearably old all at the same time.

“We just- Arthur and I, we have this Christmas _thing_ ,” Eames says in despair.

*

It probably only became a legitimate _thing_ after the second time, because you can’t really consider anything a pattern until there have been at least two of them.

The irony was that Eames only spent his second Christmas in a row with Arthur because he had been so terribly busy rushing to spend Christmas with someone else that the deer in the road had taken him utterly by surprise. He couldn’t catch the car out of its icy skid in time and they ended up shunted off the road into the side of a tree, still miles from the airport and now miles from the lodge as well.

The damage was mostly to the back of the vehicle, but one of the wheels was practically hanging off.  So, while nothing was about to blow up any time soon, there also was not going to be a whole lot of driving occurring.

“Well. That’s that scuppered,” Eames grumbled, climbing back into the car and jerking the door shut behind him.

“No go?”

“No.”

“Want me to have a look?”

“Unless you can use that condescending stare of yours to _weld metal_ , we are not going anywhere, Arthur. I can tell a write-off when I see one.”

Arthur held up placating hands.

“Hey. _I’m_ not the one with a relationship hanging in the balance,” he said, and Eames could sense the implication of superiority in his voice.

In hindsight, it was not something which Eames should ever have agreed to. But he liked Sarah more than most of the people he had been with. She was quiet and calm and felt like someone worth hanging onto. So, when he had been leaving for Russia and Sarah had told him to be back by Christmas Day or she would be unceremoniously throwing him over for that guy from her office, Eames had agreed. At the time, being back in London by Christmas had seemed both reasonable and manageable. At the time, Eames had severely overestimated himself.

Arthur would, his tone implied, never be so foolish as to tie himself into such ridiculous romantic ultimatums. 

There was no phone signal and nowhere to go in the middle of a blizzard, so they spent an hour huddled in their parkas, drinking their way through the bottle of vodka which Eames had been taking back to London as a present.

“This is so tragic,” Arthur said. “I am going to die here. On Christmas Eve.” He turned and narrowed his eyes at Eames. “With you.”

Eames shifted a little in his seat, trying to pull his arms closer in to his body.

“Well. You do know what they say is the best way to conserve body heat, don’t you?” he said, and let his smile go a little dirty.

“No,” Arthur said, shaking his head. “We are not doing that.” 

“Why not?”

“Because conserving heat doesn’t work like that, which I know you know anyway. But mostly, it is because I won’t have every Christmas of my life be all about drunk sex,” Arthur said, raising the half-empty vodka bottle to his lips, “Because that is not classy.”

Eames watched Arthur drink and held out a gloved hand for the bottle to be passed back to him.

“Bloody hell,” he said. “Every Christmas of your life? What kind of childhood did you have?”

“Not my childhood Christmases, _obviously_ ,” Arthur said, thrusting the bottle at Eames. “Goddamnit. Why do you always trap me into saying such ridiculous shit?”

Eames grinned.

“I don’t trap you. You say it on your own.”

“No, I-”

“Because you are ridiculous.”

“Look,” Arthur said, leaning across the gearstick to point a finger right between Eames’s eyes.

“What?”

“Look, you had better hope that I didn’t actually have some completely fucked up abusive childhood now, because if I did, _actually_ -”

“Actually?”

“Then you would actually just have been incredibly insensitive in making light of it all.”

“I’m sorry, love. Did you have an abusive childhood?”

“No.”

“Alright. So these bizarre sexual hang ups of yours come from somewhere else entirely, do they?”

“They can only come from you.”

“My mission is complete, then.”

Arthur dragged both hands over his face.

“Oh God,” he moaned, “I am so drunk.”

Eames stared out of the window, past the little shelf of snow which had built up around the edge. The snow was falling more lightly now. The flakes were smaller.

“You aren’t supposed to drink when you’re in danger of developing hypothermia, are you?” Eames said, thoughtfully.

Arthur separated his fingers enough to peer between them.

“No. We shouldn’t have done that.”

“I shouldn’t have tried to drive to the airport.”

“No. You definitely shouldn’t have done that.”

Eames scrambled with the door handle and cracked his door open. It stuck a little; he had to thump it with his shoulder to get it open. Arthur looked at him in alarm, suddenly a lot more alert.

“What the hell are you doing? Don’t let the cold in,” he said.

“It’s easing up a bit. I’m going to walk a little way, see if I can get our bearings.”

Arthur frowned at him.

“Well, I’ll come,” he said.

Eames paused. In his alcohol-muddled state, it seemed very important that Arthur stay behind in the safety of the car. And before he could vet them, words began to babble out of Eames’s mouth in earnest.

“No, you had better stay. Because otherwise there won’t be anyone to come after me if I get lost. And anyway, I need something to find my way back to. You have to stay here, so that I can find my way back to you again. Also, it’s probably quite important that someone stay with the car, to make sure that we keep this spot.”

Arthur’s frown deepened.

“What do you mean?” he said slowly.

Eames frowned back, a little condescending, as though everything he had just said made perfect sense, and he was waiting patiently for Arthur to catch up to the logic of it. And it was really a testament to the strength of the Russian vodka that instead of setting Eames straight, Arthur merely looked bewildered that his brain was unable to make sense of things.

Eames slammed the car door shut while Arthur was still puzzling it out.

Which was how Eames found himself alone in the dark, trudging through calf-deep snow and trying to follow the invisible line of the road as best he could. Getting out of the car had been a stupid idea in the first place, but with the freezing air to sober him up, it was quickly beginning to seem like a _suicidal_ idea.

Eames was about to turn back. He would have turned back, had he not caught sight of what looked like lights in the distance, and felt compelled to trudge towards them, to check if he was hallucinating.

He was not.

When Eames finally made it back to the car, Arthur was either dead or asleep inside it. He was slumped in his seat, with his face nestled deep inside the hood of his parka.

He woke with a jerk when Eames knocked on the window.

“Where have you been?” Arthur said, leaning across the empty driver’s seat to shove open the car door.

“I brought you a present,” Eames grinned, peering through the door.

Arthur raised one eyebrow.

“Of what? Snow?”

Eames shook his head. He unzipped the front of his parka, just enough to tug out a crumpled paper bag, which had left a little patch of warm against his chest. He leant into the car, handing the bag to Arthur.

 “There is a McDonalds,” Eames said.

Arthur stared in disbelief.

“You’re joking.”

“I would not joke about something so serious. The evidence is right here.” Eames said, shaking the bag a little for emphasis.

Arthur moved quickly, climbing out of the car and stumbling around it, towards Eames. He clung to the car’s bonnet for balance as his boots slipped on the compacted snow. Eames caught Arthur’s sleeve to steady him, as soon as he was close enough.

“Where?” Arthur demanded.

Eames pointed down the road.

“Fifteen minute walk.”

“You are shitting me.”

Eames shoved the paper bag into Arthur’s hands.

“Darling,” he said. “I would never.”

Arthur peeled the bag open and peered inside.

“I didn’t know what you like, so I gambled on a cheeseburger,” Eames said. “It’s probably cold now.”

“Oh my God,” Arthur said, pulling out the burger with delight. 

“They’ve called for a tow truck. But I suggest we walk back and wait for it there where it’s warm,” Eames said, very sensibly. Arthur was too busy making pornographic faces over the cheeseburger to take much notice.

“Here. This is so good,” he moaned and held the burger out for Eames to take a bite.

  

  1. They left the car and trudged together through the snow, towards the promise of more junk food. They had to cling to one another occasionally when they hit an icy patch, but they eventually made it to the celestial light of the golden arches without either of them going arse over tit, which was nothing short of a festive miracle.   
  



Eames remembers this Christmas as one of his favourites.

 

*

 _December 8 th 2010_

“Make him a mix tape,” Yusuf suggests, in Marrakech, as he and Eames loiter in the heat at the edge of a market. The winter sun is low in the sky. It glares between the tented stalls and catches on the mirrored patchwork of the mosaics on sale at a table close by.  

Yusuf says, “That’s an appropriate gift for someone you’re courting.”

Eames tilts down his sunglasses and peers at Yusuf over the top of them.

“Courting?” he repeats.

“Courting.”

Eames is quite appalled.

“Where are you _from_?” he says.

Yusuf shrugs. He edges closer to the mosaics and brushes his finger through the film of dust which covers a mirrored tile.

“All I’m saying is that, in American movies, that is the kind of present that people give when they’re trying to win someone over. Arthur’s an American. He’ll probably expect it.”

“That’s not what I’m- I’m not trying to-”

“I think Arthur likes The Cure. I remember him saying that.”

“I know what he likes.”

Yusuf stretches his stocky arms above his head, curving his back with a groan. Their flight here was shitty. Eames’s own shoulders are still aching like fuck.

“Great,” Yusuf says with a grin. “Shouldn’t be a problem, then. Right?”

*

The third time was the charm. It was the third time which changed the way that Eames saw everything.

By the third time, Arthur had begun to work with Cobb, and it had made him tamer. Arthur had clamped down on the wild static which buzzed through his veins. He’d camouflaged himself with posh tailoring. But Eames was always good at getting beneath the skin of people. It was his job. And he knew that beneath Arthur’s skin, the wildness was still there; he could feel the hum of it whenever he stood too close.

They ran a job together in Las Vegas, all three of them - Arthur, Eames and Cobb. The whole city was decked out with plastic garlands and fake snow. Everything twinkled and jollied.

Cobb actually had a family to get home to, so he was keen to get things over with. But it was a simple job; they could afford to rush it. They went under on the morning of Christmas Eve, after less than a week of prep work. Eames wore the milky skin of their mark’s wife. He teamed it with Laboutin heels and lipstick in pillar-box red.

“Ooh,” Eames purred, running his manicured hands over the silk which hugged his newly slender thighs. “This one’s a fox.”

He shimmied his hips. Arthur and Cobb both watched the motion. Though, while Cobb looked slightly sick, Arthur mostly looked amused.

“Don’t get too used to it,” Arthur said. “Or you’ll have a shock when you wake up and look like yourself again.”

“I’d rather look like myself,” said Eames, fluffing out his curls with one hand, “than like a teenage rent boy who’s stolen someone else’s suit.”

Arthur choked a little and held up both hands.

“I’m sorry. Is that intended to be an insult to me?” he said.

“Insult. Compliment. Take it whichever way you’d like, darling,” Eames said, winking the false eyelashes of one eye.

Arthur had already opened his mouth to reply, when Cobb was suddenly moving between them, glaring for all he was worth.

“None of this. We are working now,” Cobb said.

Arthur closed his mouth.

“Jesus Christ, if I’d known that you two were like this with one another, I would have never let you near this job, Eames.” Cobb said, pointing a warning finger at him. “Or near my point man.”

Instead of looking contrite, Eames merely quirked one eyebrow, whilst twirling a lock of hair around one finger. In this body, it felt like a perfectly appropriate response.

Out of the corner of his eye, Eames caught Arthur swallowing down a smile, before Cobb turned his pointing finger on Arthur.

“Do not let him distract you. I won’t have my Christmas ruined because we can’t hold this job together. Do you understand?” Cobb said sternly.

“I understand. I’m sorry, Dom,” Arthur said, his face wiped clean of humour, even when Eames winked at him saucily behind Cobb’s back.

“Alright,” said Cobb, looking away from Arthur and glancing around the room. His eyes settled on the figure of the mark, who was strolling between the casino tables. Cobb glanced at his watch and then tugged at the lapels of his jacket, straightening them. “Five minutes, then,” he said, and walked towards the mark.

“Five minutes, Arthur,” Eames repeated, enjoying the honeyed sound of a female voice on his tongue.

“Cloakroom’s this way,” Arthur said. He reached out and curled one hand around Eames’s wrist, which was much thinner than usual and used the grip to tug Eames in the right direction.

“For the record,” Eames said, allowing Arthur to lead him through the door. “I’d like to state that this is an incredibly half-arsed plan. Assuming that a mark will implicitly trust Cobb purely because he offers him confirmation of his wife’s adulterous ways? It’s sloppy, Arthur, even for you.”

“Getting at a man through his dick is always the fastest way,” Arthur said, curtly. “It’s just unfortunate that we don’t have somebody else on this job to do the honours instead of me.” He shrugged out of his jacket in one smooth motion.

Eames found himself sinking his teeth into the lipstick of his bottom lip as he watched the movement.

There must have had at least a three minute window left for them to set up an appropriately compromising scenario, but Eames was already strutting towards Arthur in his heels. He hooked one satiny knee around Arthur’s hip and caught Arthur’s tie in one fist, pressing against him, breathing warm against his ear.

“Let’s test that theory,” Eames said and slid his mouth from Arthur’s ear, down to his lips.

In the end, perhaps Eames got a little too caught up in the sensation of Arthur’s hand pushing the silk of his dress further and further up his thigh. Perhaps he was a little too distracted by the way that he could cling to Arthur’s shoulders and feel Arthur support his weight. Perhaps he kissed Arthur with a little more abandon than was strictly advisable; it meant that he almost forgot to step back and look horrified when he heard Cobb open the door and reveal their scandal to the mark.

More importantly, it made it clear that he had been enjoying himself in a way that was entirely unprofessional.

It was a surprise then, after Cobb had shaken their hands and sped away into the sunset, when Arthur turned to Eames with his hands in his pockets, looking thoughtful.

“Do you have anywhere else to be?” Arthur asked.

Eames shook his head slowly.

“No,” he said.

“Me neither,” Arthur said. And then, “Do you want to stay here?”

Eames drew in a long breath. He stared around at the glassy buildings and flashing lights. There was a giant plastic snowman towering above a store across the street. The sky was pink with the setting sun.

“Yeah,” Eames said, “Alright.”

They ended up in an overpriced diner, eating pancakes for dinner. They’d been intending to get something appropriate for the occasion, like turkey, but then Eames had turned his menu over and said, “Hey, they have all day breakfast,” and that was that.

They ploughed through their food in record time. 

“How is it that you have nobody to spend Christmas with?” Eames asked Arthur, in between bites.

“I don’t know,” Arthur said, straight-faced, “Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I look like a teenage rent boy.”

Eames grinned.

“That should get you plenty of offers,” he said. “It’s a look that suits you, anyway. Don’t get too down about it. You can’t help it.”

“Better than looking like a middle-aged pimp,” Arthur said.

Eames smirked, scraping whipped butter onto his already overloaded fork.

“I do not look middle-aged in the slightest,” he said, quite calmly.

“This is getting surreal.”

“You’re surreal.”

Arthur smiled, and one canine slipped a little over his bottom lip. It made him look feral. The waitress appeared and refilled their coffee mugs. They both watched her pour.

Throwing the rent boy comment back out there had been Arthur’s neat sidestep around the question which Eames had asked. It made sense. In this business, you were really better off pretending that you had no family, that you had come from nothing and nowhere. Eames would have been just as evasive if he had been asked the same. Still...

“Are you lonely? Does this life make you lonely?” Eames asked quite suddenly, as the waitress was moving away from their table. The question made Arthur’s smile slip a little. He glanced down at his plate, poking his fork into his food as he considered his answer.

“Not exactly,” Arthur said eventually, looking up from the mess on his plate to meet Eames’s eyes. “I sometimes wonder if I could be different, though. And then I wonder what being different might feel like.”

Eames made a little noise of agreement, a thoughtful murmur.

“Are _you_ lonely?” Arthur said.

“No,” Eames said, digging back into his pancakes. And then, glancing up, “But I wonder too.”

Eames paid for their dinner-breakfasts, so Arthur bought them a hotel room for the night. It was far more expensive than two platefuls of batter, but Arthur wouldn’t listen to reason about that.

They drank their way through the contents of the mini-bar, divvying up the worst of the smaller bottles between them. Then they spread themselves across the bed and all over the room and fooled around for hours.

It was incredible. Not porno-movie-incredible, but incredible in a different way. Despite being more than two years in the making, this sex was giggly and shameless and fun.

So what if Eames practically concussed himself against the headboard? Or that they got lube all over the bed sheets? And so what if Arthur spilt beer on the carpet and made Eames stop everything while he tried to mop up the mess with their clean towels from the bathroom? So what if between them they spent more time laughing than they did moaning in ecstasy?

That was all part of what made it incredible.

In the morning, Eames left first. Arthur waited behind to make sure there was a respectable time gap between the two of them leaving the hotel. After all, things like romance really had no place in their business. And if neither of them were lonely anyway, then there was no point going out of their way to stick together. This was something they both agreed upon.

They did still kiss one another breathless, though, just inside the door, when they tried to say goodbye. Eames had his jacket on and the door handle in his hand. He’d attempted to leave three times already but kept turning back for more. It was truly bizarre that the grip of his fingers at the back of Arthur’s skull grew a little tighter with every fresh resolution he made to stop.

In the end, Arthur made a noise in the back of his throat, something abortive, like choking back pain. He wrenched his mouth away from Eames’s for the last time, his fingertips squeezing harder for a second as he let go of Eames’s jaw.

“Okay. This is stupid,” he said, smoothing both hands down Eames’s lapels, prolonging the contact. “Goodbye. And Merry Christmas,” he said firmly.

Eames pressed a last hard peck against Arthur’s cheek, a whole-hearted gesture, a kiss which made a sound effect. He squeezed his fingers around Arthur’s bicep as he did so, before reaching down to his suitcase.

“Goodbye, love,” he said, with a crooked smile which mocked the both of them and their foolishness. Arthur returned it, the same wry curve of lips.

On the other side of the door, Eames had to walk away very fast to get free of the temptation to not walk away at all. He walked fast to get rid of the memories of the early hours of Christmas morning, when they had been all fucked out, draped together at the foot of the hotel bed and half-covered with a blanket. The room stank of liquor and sex. Casablanca was showing on the TV, but they’d muted it because they were talking over it anyway, and Eames felt more at home than he had done in a very long time.

He probably has not felt quite the same way since.

*

 _November 10 th 2010_

Eames is on the big new escalator at Kings Cross, heading up from the Victoria line. There is a red paper poppy pinned to the lapel of his coat, and he has a copy of the Evening Standard tucked beneath his arm. He’s messing with his phone, not really paying attention to what’s going on around him, so it catches him by surprise when he hears someone shout his name.

When he looks up, he sees Arthur standing on the opposite escalator, heading down. Eames feels a little kick in his chest, the same feeling he gets when he wakes from a dream. He waves to Arthur, because he is too surprised to do much else.

“Stay at the top. I’ll come up.” Arthur shouts, as the escalators slide them further apart.

“Okay,” Eames shouts back, ignoring the stares this draws from the disgruntled commuters.

Arthur pulls a suitcase with a long handle behind him as he steps off the escalator. It is small enough to be carry-on. He offers Eames a smile and a handshake. Arthur looks well. He looks rested.

“Eames,” he says.

Eames closes his fingers around Arthur’s and pulls him to one side, out of the line of the escalators and ticket gates. He lets go.

“Where have you come from?” Eames asks.

“I’m on my way to Heathrow,” Arthur says.

Eames frowns.

“Bloody hell. Why didn’t you take a cab?”

“I like the tube,” Arthur says, a little haughty, as though daring Eames to question his knowledge of London. He adjusts his grip on the handle of his case and raises his eyebrows. “Do you have time for a coffee?” he says.

Eames stares at him.

“You’re joking, aren’t you?” he says. “I haven’t heard from you since Fischer.”

Eames does not add that the last time they were alone together, he had split open his knuckles against the plaster of Arthur’s wall.

“I haven’t spoken to anyone since Fischer,” Arthur says. “I needed a break from it. You just happen to be the first person I’ve run into.”

“Who else were you expecting to run into in London?”

Arthur sighs, looking away in irritation.

He says, “Look, if you don’t feel like it-”

“No. No, come on,” Eames says, and reaches into his pocket for his Oyster card.

There’s a Starbucks near to the British Library. They sit there, with steaming cups of tea and mostly reminisce about the Fischer job, filling their chat with coded names and implied meanings. It’s easy. There’s no pressure.

After an hour, Arthur begins checking his watch every two minutes, rather than every ten, but he doesn’t say anything about leaving. Eames watches him in amusement.

“You had better go,” he says, when he can stand it no longer. “You don’t want to miss your flight.”

“No. You’re right,” says Arthur. He stands, pulls the handle of his suitcase up straight and looks towards the door. For a moment Eames thinks he is not going to say anything else. But then Arthur looks him dead in the eye and says, “Where are you spending Christmas?”

He says it suddenly, in one decisive plunge, like somebody jumping off a cliff. Eames doesn’t know what to make of that, so he is careful to keep the emotion out of his voice until he is sure where this is going.

“I don’t know yet,” Eames says. “Where are you spending Christmas?”

Arthur can’t hide his thoughts well. His poker face is terrible. And right now, he looks as vulnerable as Eames has ever seen him. 

“That’s why I asked you,” he says.

Eames stands up, putting them level, because it seems only fair. He glances around the coffee shop, deliberately not meeting Arthur’s gaze, and then leans closer, keeping things furtive.

“Are you insinuating that you might want to spend Christmas in the same place that I spend Christmas?” he says.

Arthur’s eyes soften around the edges and his lips twitch. The early warning signs of a smile.

“Perhaps,” Arthur says, in a voice which could be called flirtatious if it were used by anyone other than Arthur.

Eames smirks. He feels he has license now to eye Arthur up a bit, so he does. And he enjoys it too, taking in the lean legs, the trim waist. Then he makes a tutting noise, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

“Coy doesn’t suit you Arthur,” Eames says.

Arthur presses his lips together, but his eyes are still smiling.

“I’m not really sure what I’m insinuating,” Arthur says, which sounds like the truth. And then he grins. “I suppose it all depends on how good a present you get me. Get me something worth my time. Then maybe we can talk.”

Obviously this is not meant literally. But weeks later, Eames still finds himself having some kind of breakdown in the middle of Selfridges. Just because something isn’t literal doesn’t make it unimportant. 

*

The year after Vegas, Arthur and Eames didn’t exactly spend Christmas together. They saw one another on Christmas Day, but Eames has never been sure that this one counts, largely because of the fighting.

The problem was that Mal died in January, before the memories of Arthur’s kisses in the hotel room had even properly faded from Eames’s mind. And Mal’s death didn’t only wreck Cobb; Mal’s death wrecked everything. She had been prolific. People knew who she was. And ripples of what had happened to her spread ominously through the dreamshare business. The circumstances were so suspicious that people were unnerved. It made them sit up and pay a little more attention to the dangers of their work. Suddenly, _everyone_ was militarized.

That year was a rough one. Work was patchy. Cobb was impossible to get hold of, because he spent all of his time on the move and covering his tracks. And Arthur was never far behind him. Word on the grapevine was that you couldn’t get Cobb at all anymore unless you went through Arthur, because Cobb and Arthur were never apart. Word on the grapevine was that Arthur was replacing Mrs. Cobb. Word on the grapevine was that Mrs. Cobb had had a very specific reason to jump.

Eames always tried to dispel those rumours as best he could, because they didn’t do anyone any favours.

He spent a lot of time in Rio. He knew people there.

The call finally came in the form of Arthur’s voice crackling over a bad line in the middle of the night, after Eames had stumbled back to his room reeling from too much tequila. He’d wiped the floor clean with the bar’s other poker players, but had received a black eye for his pains. Some people were such sore losers. The top of his cheekbone was stinging like a bitch.

It was December 19th.

“How soon can you be in Argentina?” Arthur said. Eames could barely hear him over the static. But he could hear him enough.

“Darling,” he said, falling backwards onto the bed, his phone cradled in one hand. “I’ve missed you.”

Eames stretched one arm above his head, towards the pillows, not noticing he was grinning until he felt the bruise on his cheek twinge painfully.

Arthur said, “Eames, I can’t hear you. The line is bad. How long?”

Eames closed his eyes. His mouth was dry and tasted like cotton. His eye had begun to throb.

“Two days,” he said, more loudly. “I’ll be there in two days.”

He heard Arthur say something about meeting at the airport, and then something else, which got lost in the buzz of the line, just before the connection crackled and went dead.

A day later, Arthur called back, over a clean line.

“Job’s off,” he said. “Stay where you are. Don’t come here. We’re getting out of the country.”

Eames was standing in front of his open suitcase, with three balls of fresh socks in one hand and a frothy toothbrush in the other. He leant over the sink in the corner of the room and spat into.

Mouth empty, he said, “Where are you going?”

“I’m sending Cobb south.”

“I didn’t ask after Cobb. I asked after you.”

There was a pause.

“Home,” Arthur said. “Home to New York. I’ll probably-”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I’ll probably lie low there until Christmas is over.”

It wasn’t really an invitation, and Eames honestly didn’t plan to interpret it as such. But he spent three days pacing his stuffy room in Rio and sitting slumped in pokey bars and had eventually thought, _Fuck it, what kind of Christmas is this?_

Which is why, on Christmas Day, Eames found himself standing in the doorway of Arthur’s flat, staring at a man who was not Arthur, a man who was wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts and who very much did not look like a squatter. And anyway, Arthur was right behind him, pulling a crumpled shirt over his bare shoulders, and trying to flatten down his hair, looking flustered and maybe a little guilty. Eames immediately wished he had not come here, but it was clearly far too late for that.

Instead he said, “Bollocks to this,” turned on his heel and began to walk away with as much dignity as he could muster.

It was a fair amount of dignity, and it might have just remained intact, had Arthur not taken it upon himself to follow.

“Eames,” Arthur said. “Wait. When I called you, I didn’t think you’d- I mean, I didn’t expect you to-”

Eames marched right back across the hall to the lift, and jabbed a thumb against the down arrow.

“Of course you didn’t. This Christmas thing we have is clearly complete nonsense, anyway. Why on earth would you-”

“What thing? There is- There’s no _thing_ between us Eames,” Arthur said, blustering, his voice gruff with insincerity. “We fucked a year ago. So what? It’s not a thing. It’s nothing to get worked up about.”

Arthur squared his shoulders as he said it and lifted his chin like a defiant child and it was the lack of conviction in his voice that made Eames angry. It was the way that Arthur was not even attempting to believe his own words and yet was still expecting Eames to. If he were going to lie, he could at least have the decency to lie properly.

In retrospect, Eames’s reaction was probably a little extreme. But this was the type of rage which had been building unnoticed for a while, the kind which can only be lessened by a violent release of pressure, and a kind of haze came over him. Arthur’s face swam before his eyes and Eames knew very quickly that he was either going to punch Arthur or have to punch something else.

In his defence, Eames did not know that the plaster would collapse quite so dramatically when he turned and drove his fist right into the wall.

They both froze for a moment, stunned at how easily the wall had crumpled around Eames’s fist. Stunned at how utterly ridiculous it was that Eames had actually put his fist through a wall.

Eames’s first instinct was to apologise. But from somewhere down the corridor came the sound of a door creaking cautiously open. And then Arthur was sincere. Then Arthur was sincerely angry right back.

The man in the T-shirt jumped to his feet in alarm as Arthur manhandled Eames back inside the flat, kicking the door shut behind them.

“Goddamnit, Eames. I have neighbours. I’m trying hard to be low fucking profile, here. I like this block. The deli on the street is my favourite,” Arthur shouted.

The man approached them, with his hands help up.

“Hey,” he said, “Look. Let’s not-”

“Sit down,” Arthur barked. The man did so instantly, his eyes going wide and Eames couldn’t help but smirk at him a little.

“Not seen this side of our Arthur, have you?”

The guy blinked at Arthur.

“Since when is your name _Arthur_?” he said.

Arthur didn’t have the chance to answer him, because he was too busy seizing Eames by the collar and thrusting him against the door.

“You had better pay for my wall, motherfucker,” he growled.

Eames just kept smirking.

“You’re a nasty piece of work, Arthur. Did anyone ever tell you that?” he said.

“Well, you have one hell of a mean streak in you. Anyone tell you that?”

Arthur shoved at Eames a little more as he said this, grinding Eames’s shoulder blades back against the wall. The way his hip knocked against Eames’s and the way that his fists were clenched so tightly around the triangles of Eames’s collar was almost sexy. So Eames reached out a thumb and dragged it across Arthur’s bottom lip.

Arthur jerked away. He let go of Eames’s collar like the cotton had burned him.

“You don’t even know me,” Arthur spat.

Eames groped behind him for the door handle. As he closed his hand around it, he was hit with the memory of trying to leave the room in Las Vegas a year ago. His lip curled.

He said, “Apparently not, no.”

Out on the street, Eames hailed a cab and headed straight back to the airport, where he bought a seat on the first available flight. He was in the air for the best part of a day and did not switch his phone back on until he had set himself up in a scruffy hotel in Mombasa and found his way to the nearest bar. There was a voicemail waiting on the phone: Arthur’s voice, a little slurred his ear. There was music somewhere in the background but Eames could hear him well enough over the top of it.

“I’m sorry that I said our thing wasn’t a thing. That was unnecessary. And a lie,” said Arthur’s recorded voice. “This guy’s totally boring, Eames. I should have had faith that you’d do the Christmas miracle thing and turn up at my door. But that level of optimism is a bit beyond me, I guess. Next year, I’ll- Well.” Arthur sighed. There was a shuffling noise on the line, like Arthur was switching the phone from one ear to the other.

“Next year is next year, isn’t it?” he said. “Merry Christmas, Eames.”

*

 _December 20 th 2010_

In the end, Eames decides that the best present he can give Arthur is a little faith.

“If I told you where he is, what would you do with that information?” Cobb says, over the phone.

“I was thinking of selling it to Cobol. Why? Is that not acceptable?” Eames says.

“Eames. I am serious.”

“What could I possibly do to him?”

“I’m not sure. But I’m highly suspicious of this whole thing.”

There is a beep on the line, signalling an email dropping into the account Eames uses for work. He ignores it, because this is more important; Christmas is at stake. The only thing he still needs is to pin Arthur to a location. After all, buying somebody a plane ticket to London is a useless gesture of faith if you have nowhere to send the ticket to.

“I have a job he might be interested in. Alright? This is business,” Eames lies. “You remember what that is, right?”

“I remember.”

“I want to discuss it with him in person. And he’s dropped clear off of all my radars. I can’t get a whiff of him.”

This part is mostly true. It has been barely three weeks since Eames saw Arthur at Kings Cross, but he has already managed to lose track of him again.

“Well,” Cobb says eventually, “I honestly don’t know where he is. He’s taking a breather.”

“You don’t know?”

“I haven’t heard from him in a couple of months, I guess.”

Eames sucks in a steadying breath.

“But you felt the need to string me along for this whole conversation?” he says.

“I’m sorry if it came across that way,” Cobb says, quite politely, although Eames can hear the smirk in his voice. “Enjoy the holidays, Eames.”

Eames swears as Cobb disconnects the call, but the curse trails off when he reads the email notification on his phone’s screen.

It reads:

 _Heading back to NYC. I’ll be at home for Xmas._

 _I’m insinuating whatever you want me to be._

 _\- A_

Eames smiles to himself, because he knows the New York address. He entrusts it to his contact at BA, specifying December 23rd for arrival.

Then he waits.

*

There are some things which Eames does not know. He does not know that Arthur can no longer hear ‘In Between Days’ by the Cure without picturing Eames pulling faces and that now, this song always brings a smile to Arthur’s face.

Eames does not know that one year in Russia, Arthur wished for the snow to get so bad that Eames would miss his flight back to London and have to stay. Nor does he know that Arthur still felt a little guilty about this for months afterwards.

Eames does not know that Arthur was lying awake, lost in memories of a hotel room in Las Vegas, when he got the phone call about Mal’s death. That Arthur had been running his fingers over the phone’s keypad, staring at the name ‘Eames’, and trying to decide whether or not to hit the call button. He’ll never know that Arthur’s heart leapt a little when the phone buzzed suddenly to life in his hand, and that just for a moment, Arthur thought...

Eames does not know that he was never really needed for the job in Argentina, or that Arthur made up some bullshit excuse to call him in, which Dom very nearly did not buy. He’ll never know that Arthur smashed a coffee mug in frustration when the job went to shit and they had to call the whole thing off.

Eames does not know that when Arthur gets a plane ticket in the post he feels so nervous that his stomach turns over and his palms start to sweat. He does not know that Arthur stares at the ticket and thinks, _Holy shit, I’m not sure I have the balls for this_ and then feeds it through the paper shredder before he can change his mind.

*

 _December 24 th 2010_

It’s been snowing weakly for most of the day. The snow has been melting into the damp pavements (the only kind of white Christmas that London ever manages is a half-hearted one), but now that it’s dark, the flakes are beginning to stick a little. They catch on Eames’s eyelashes as he trudges home to his empty house.

There is a small church on the corner of Eames’s road. Eames stopped believing in God a long time ago, but the church is lit up prettily, and Eames can hear organ music and voices singing coming from inside. The sounds lure him in, to a pew at the very back, where he sits and listens. Eames loves carols; they remind him of being a school boy.

The choir sings ‘Oh Little Town of Bethlehem’ and ‘Good King Wenceslas’ and saves ‘Come All Ye Faithful’ for their finale. The chords of the organ shake the air and the voices crescendo, a small group of them breaking apart from the others, to sing a tremulous descant, the notes of which Eames can still remember, even though his voice has not been about to reach them for years.

Eames drops half the contents of his wallet into the collection plate as people start to file out, because why not? He crosses the road outside of the church, holding an apologetic hand up to a black cab he really should not have walked out in front of.

The house is dark and cold when he reaches it. Eames slips his key into the lock, shoulders open the door, and pushes his way inside. He tramples all over the post on the floor which he couldn’t be arsed to pick up and sort through.

Eames is searching for a corkscrew, when he finds the _I ♥ Hong Hong_ lighter at the very back of a drawer. He flicks at it with his thumb and the little flame springs to life. He hunts around for a candle to light, something he can put in the window perhaps. The house isn’t exactly filled with Christmas cheer. Eames hasn’t bothered to decorate. He doesn’t own decorations.

He hasn’t spent Christmas here in five years, after all.

There are no candles. But it doesn’t matter; it’s just him. The house has a fireplace, though, so Eames throws logs into it and stokes up a good fire. He has pre-packaged mince pies and a bottle of red that he picked up at M&S on the way home, so he brings those into the sitting room and slouches on the sofa in front of some maudlin BBC adaptation; something by Dickens, Eames thinks. Eames hates Dickens.

He falls asleep like that, like his grandfather used to, with crumbs dusting his sweater and the taste of wine at the back of his throat.

When Eames wakes again, with a start, things look a little different. The fire has died to a gentle glow and the room is warm, with fogged windows. The adaptation is finished and there is some sort of countdown show on the television, showing clips of different movies. It is two o’clock in the morning, and the doorbell is ringing.

Eames stumbles to the door, brushing away the crumbs from his chest as he does so. It is too late for carollers, but Eames switches on the lamp in the hallway and grabs his wallet anyway before he opens the door.  

There is a cab pulling away from the curb, its headlights cutting through a fresh flurry of snow and Arthur is standing on the doorstep. He opens his mouth, closes it again. He clearly has no idea what to say.

“You must have flown all night,” Eames says.

Arthur nods.

“I did.”

Eames steps aside, holding the door open so that the glow from his home spills out onto the road.

“You had better come in, then,” he says.

“Thank you.”

Arthur stamps the snow from his feet and steps into the hall. He pauses, just inside the doorway, to press his icy lips against Eames’s warm cheek.

“Merry Christmas, Eames,” he says.

 


End file.
